DEFICIT OF £2,359,000

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 749, 23 August 1929, Page 9

DEFICIT OF £2,359,000

FEDERAL TREASURER SUBMITS BUDGET INCREASE IN TAXATION (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Reed. 9.5 a.m. CANBERRA, Today. Dr. Earle Page, Federal Treasurer, delivered his Budget speech yesterday. The total revenue received by the Commonwealth Government for the year amounted to £61,419,000. The expenditure was £63.778,000, leaving a deficit of £2,359,000. This was caused by the failure of the customs and excise revenue to reach the estimate by £2,241,429. The postal revenue showed a surplus of £158,000. Dr. Page said he estimated that the public debt now amounted to £173 10s 8d a head of the population. In the past six years the Commonwealth had redeemed £7,416,000 of the public debt out of revenue, thus effecting a permanent saying of £400,000 a year in interest. Dr. Page estimates the revenue for 1929-30 at £64,198,000, and the expenditure at £63,837,000. Dr. Page announced that in order to reduce the deficit, the Government intended to impose an increased supertax of 10 per cent, on taxable individual incomes exceeding £2,000, and also to reimpose the amusement tax of 5 per cent, on the total receipts for admission to entertainments. Dr. Page directed attention to the fact that the war repatriation services and old-age and invalid pensions had absorbed £54,500,000 of the total revenue. Statistics contained in the Federal Budget revealed that production in the Commonwealth had increased in the past seven years by £62,000,000 to £442,000,000. The movement of the trade balance in favour of the Commonwealth disclosed an improvement of £21,000,000. Savings in bank deposits had risen from £162,000,000 in 1922 to £215,000,000 in 1928. The number of telephones now in use in Australia was 505,554, which made the Commonwealth sixth on the list of telephone density throughout the world. Drastic economies, involving a reduction of the naval personnel by over 600; the sale of four destroyers; and the paying-off of other vessels, was announced by the Federal Ti’easurer. The defence expenditure will be over £500,000 less than it was last year.